


Stop Talking

by Eli (AisukuriMuStudio)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Panic Attacks, Serious Injuries, The Chargers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 08:03:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8005012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AisukuriMuStudio/pseuds/Eli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a moment, Graham wondered if he somehow ended up outside of Texas. But how? The closest city to Austin that wasn’t in Texas was in Mexico, almost three hundred miles south. Or—or Oklahoma, that’d be at least three hundred and fifty miles. Would someone really drive him that far and dump him? In some Amish village where they spoke Spanish and somehow haven’t even heard of Texas?</p>
<p>Did Amish people even speak Spanish?</p>
<p>Or; Grim may not be a lost king, but he did come from a land far away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stop Talking

**Author's Note:**

> Rating for cursing and description of a somewhat upsetting injury.
> 
> Written for a prompt on the dragon age kink meme:
> 
> "Grim is a modern guy in Thedas
> 
> So let's say that the reason that Grim doesn't talk much is because he's from 'our universe'. Give me a story about how he got there and became a Charger. Does he know about the DA games? Has he played any of them? Go nuts!"

Graham woke up with a pounding headache, worse than any hangover he’d ever had, and a pain in his back that made him want to cry. The sunlight was _bright_ , but he forced his eyes open, unable to hold back the groan in his throat.

What the hell happened to him? He remembered—he remembered brief flashes. A bar, a hot guy, a drink. Everything after that was … nonexistent. Did he really have that much to drink?

He blinked, taking in his surroundings. Right above him were fucking _trees._ Trees? This didn’t seem the carefully cultivated trees of parks in downtown Austin. Was it possible he got blackout drunk with that guy? He… didn’t think he had that much. Was it possible he would’ve allowed himself to get dumped out of town?

Shit, he had to get back. He had _work_ tomorrow. And he had to get his hands on his medication before shit hit the fan. He shoved himself to his feet, and the pain in his back _exploded._ The center of the pain was sticky with what must be sweat, but he didn’t have any idea how long he’d been stuck outside. Hours, maybe. He had to find a bus and get home; he felt the weight of his wallet in his back pocket, and couldn’t help but feel relieved that he didn’t get mugged, even if his phone had disappeared.

Now that he was up and looking around, Graham saw a group of buildings not that far away, though the town – if it could really be called that – didn’t even have paved roads. As he moved closer, he noticed there wasn’t a single car here, either. An Amish village, maybe? He didn’t even realize there was a large enough Amish population in the Austin area to merit an Amish village.

Shit, did he end up farther from Austin than he should have? Great. Fucking great. His roommate was going to laugh so fucking hard when Graham walked back in.

“Excuse me,” he said to the first person he spotted; the woman, dressed in what look to be homemade rags, nearly dropped her bucket of water. She turned to look at him, eyes wide, and he cleared his throat. “Excuse me, miss. Do you know the quickest way to Austin?”

“Qué?” she asked, a look of horror on her face that he didn’t understand. A glance down to his clothes revealed that he actually looked a lot better than her, dressed in his cowboy get-up that always works on people from out of state.

Aw, shit, he lost his hat; where did his hat go?

“Austin,” he repeated before he let himself get too sidetracked. The pain in his back was pulsating, making it even harder to focus than his wandering thoughts. “Austin. As in, Texas.”

Her expression remained the same. For a moment, he wondered if he somehow ended up _outside_ of Texas. But how? The closest city to Austin that _wasn’t_ in Texas was in Mexico, almost three hundred miles south. Or—or Oklahoma, that’d be at least three hundred and fifty miles. Would someone really drive him that far and dump him? In some Amish village where they spoke Spanish and somehow haven’t even heard of _Texas?_

Did Amish people even speak Spanish? Well, if they did, surely they’d understand the word ‘Texas.’ Right?

He shifted his weight, and he bit the inside of his cheek as the pain radiated throughout him. Shit. “I… look, is there a phone I can use?” There had to be _something_ here that he could use, if not hers, then maybe a payphone.

“Qué?” she said again, and she sounded—scared? What the hell.

“A _phone.”_ He repeated but she shook her head, the look on her face more like something confused than horrified now. Shit, what was phone in Spanish again? “ _Fono._ Ah, uh, _teléfono._ I lost mine. You guys have phones here, don’t you?” Oh, please, tell him they had phones here. Maybe he could call his roommate and ask him what the area code on this number is, ask him to google where he is.

“Oy, señor.” He turned his head to see a young boy, no older than twelve, pointing at his back. “Tú sangras.”

Graham didn’t know Spanish _that_ well. But… what was that kid pointing at? He raised his arm closest to the side where pain was radiating, and slowly, afraid of what he would find, and pressed his hand against the stickiness.

He found not only a _surge_ of pain strong enough to make him double over, but also a lump – something protruding, and when he brushed it, it only made the pain that much worse.

_Shit._ Something was—was sticking out of his back. It wasn’t large, but it was—hell, fuck, it certainly shouldn’t have _been there!_ He didn’t feel it before when he was lying on his back—did he? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t—

“I need Zoloft,” he croaked out, his other hand clutching his chest. He felt the panic attack oncoming, and while Zoloft wouldn’t stop it, it’d definitely mute it. Dampen it. Make it easier to bear.

He needed Zoloft. A phone. Medical attention. Shit, shit, _shit_ , this was going to hell.

“Sígueme,” the boy said, and he turned to walk, gesturing for Graham to follow him. Graham wasn’t quite sure what the hell else he could do but hyperventilate, so he followed him, trying to calm himself down before he really did have a panic attack.

* * *

 

The doctor of questionable authority gave him some kind of liquid that smelled strongly of some kind of herb, close to rosemary but not quite. It was a dull green color, and it was so bitter that he wanted to puke. He refused more than a sip of it, even though the doctor insisted, even though it all but made his panic attack dissipate. The panic just background noise now, no stronger than any of his other anxieties in this bizarre situation.

He couldn’t do it. “Just – just patch me up, man,” he said to the woman, an elder who scowled at him every time he opened his mouth. “Please. I need—do you have Zoloft? It’s a kind of pill—I’ll pay, I can pay, I have cash.”

She grumbled something in Spanish—was he in Mexico? That must be where he was—and when she started to work the branch from his backside, he _yelped_ at the pain that shot through him. She sighed, stuck a bit in his mouth, and continued; his teeth dug into the bit as he screamed for dear fucking life, but she managed to get the branch out, and then it was just ragged breathing as he tried to regulate the pain, not nearly as bad as hyperventilation.

There was one word that stood out amid all the others she was muttering, a constant litany of a language he only half-understood—“elfroot.” It sounded familiar, in a way that Graham couldn’t shake from his head. It bounced around for a bit, then it became too difficult to focus on, and he let the word fall from his thoughts. It wasn’t important. It wasn’t more important than the fact he was going to get healed up.

“No offense,” he said to her as she took out the thread, eyeing the liquid she’d set on the table, “but potions were outdated at _least_ two centuries ago. And is this really where you want to stitch me up? Is this place sterile? Is the _thread_ sterile?”

She shook her head, still scowling and muttering in a tone that indicated frustration. Or irritation. It occurred to him that maybe she _did_ understand him, she just couldn’t speak English. What if she was telling him it wasn’t sterile, that it was the best she had, what if what if _what if_ —

Before he could change his mind, he got up, ignored the twinge of pain in his back, which felt only slightly better now that the offending object was gone. “I-I need to go,” he said, and she reached to grab his arm—he dodged her grip, tripped over something while moving backwards, and slammed into the fucking wall, which made him _gasp_ , pain shuddering through him.

“Señor,” she started to say, and her tone reminded him of his mother’s, firm and unyielding. He shook his head, swallowed—and then he _ran_.

* * *

 

The next time he opened his mouth, it was in a tavern several towns over. He just kept running and running and _running,_ never looking back, not once, and when he reached something that actually resembled a _city_ , he had to stop by the side of the still unpaved road, leaning against a building and trying desperately to recover his breath, with the pain in his back hurting even _more_ than it had before.

He ignored it, pushed through. The tavern was the place he looked for, because that was the place one could get a drink, and maybe someone who actually knew what the hell a phone is. He considered, for a moment, pouring whiskey over his wound, but he’d rather use something like hydrogen peroxide. Besides, was that even true? Did alcohol work? Or was that just a myth?

He was subject to several stares as he walked in, right up to the counter, and he knew it was probably because of his wound. He didn’t sit, because to sit would be to aggravate that wound, and he didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about whether or not it had stopped bleeding, how much blood he’d lost, whether it was still open or not. He just wanted some fucking booze and a phone and he wanted to go _home_.

“Give me the strongest whiskey you’ve got,” he said, opening his wallet and sliding a twenty across the counter. He prayed that the man spoke English, because he didn’t have any clue how to say ‘whiskey’ in Spanish. The bartender took the bill and scowled at it.

“Disculpe?” he demanded, holding it up for Graham to see as if he was an idiot.

“…It’s twenty dollars,” Graham said, keeping his voice slow and articulate, because he had lost his patience. This day had been a pain in the ass, and he just wanted something to go right, please. “Vingt dólares.” Vingt? Was that right? Shit, that was French.

“Dólares?” The way the man said it, it was as if he’d never heard the word before. He scowled and shoved the bill back at him. “Sales, extraño.”

Fuck, his back hurt. It _hurt_. He grabbed the bill, and he noticed his hands were shaking.

_Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it._

“It’s…” Graham groaned a bit, resisting the urge to hold his side, as he held up the bill into the light. No, he—he can clearly see the watermark. “It’s real,” he said, voice shaking just as bad as his hands, and he shoved it forward again. Was that what the issue is? “There—there’s the watermark…”

“Watermark?” The bartender sounded incredulous, and he only managed to pronounce the word half-right, and he shoved it back in Graham’s face. The next words were said so quickly, and so angrily, that Graham took half a step back, stunned.

For a moment, the world spun; he almost fell over, but then there was a hand on his shoulder. When he looked up, he saw an impossibly tall and broad man; a man with no shirt on, but a harness, and he had horns protruding from the side of his head and an eyepatch covering one eye.

The man spoke in Spanish, and his voice was smooth as velvet, deep as the sea. For a moment, he struck Graham as familiar—too familiar. He had a bit of an accent, as if Spanish wasn’t his first language.

The bartender started to talk again, waving the bill in Graham’s face as he does, his voice high and angry, and Graham got that feeling of vertigo again, this time accompanied by nausea. He shouldn’t stay here. Shit, he _really_ shouldn’t stay here.

Before Graham could think better of it, he grabbed the bill, shoved his wallet into his pocket while the bill itself stuck to his sweaty palm. “I’m—leaving,” he said, the pain in his back shuddering at the movement. “I’m leaving. I’m leaving.”

There was a moment where the tall, horned man seemed to be assessing the situation. Then he asked, “Everything okay?” in an English so clear, he could’ve been back in Texas. That was when it slammed into place. He knew where he’d seen this guy before.

If he wasn’t pale before, he was pale now.

“Where am I?” he demanded, because the guy who looked suspiciously like a fictional race could… just be cosplaying, after all. Could be imitating the original’s voice. It… It was possible that this could be not real.

Maybe he was even dreaming.

“You’re on the Ferelden side of the Frostbacks,” said the giant. “You got some place to be, big guy? You look like you could use some elfroot.”

Holy _shit_. For a moment, Graham felt like he was going to be sick. His hands were cold, and sweaty, and it was getting harder to breathe. If he vomited, would his panic go away?

“Hey,” the Iron Bull said, and he tightened his grip on Graham’s shoulder. “Take a breath—”

Graham spun on his heel and _sprinted_.

It was admittedly not his brightest move. Running implies guilt to a lot of people, and he’d done way too much running, and his pain in his back was getting _worse_ the longer he tried not to think about it, and he was tired, and he was hungry, and he was going to puke but he also felt a panic attack coming on, or was that from the blood loss? Or was it both?

It was amazing, though, that the Iron Bull neither caught him nor ran after him. When Graham stopped, he was on the opposite side of town, and it was starting to rain. The water against his open wound certainly didn’t fucking feel good. He took a deep breath as he came to a stop, trying to think through this.

He was… in Ferelden. _Ferelden??_

He had just met the Iron Bull. _The_ Iron Bull. And he’d actually sounded like—like, what was his name, Freddie Prince? Junior? Was that it? Fuck.

If… no, there’s no way. Graham took a moment to laugh at himself for being so stupid. Fuck, he was dreaming. He must have gotten really drunk last night, and it was giving him this super weird, super long, super clear fever dream. He would wake up soon and forget it all by lunch time.

But as Graham stood there, in the rain, and as the pain continued to explode in his back, he realized that his dream wasn’t stopping. Not any time soon. So he’d better try and make this as comfortable as possible, until the dream dies out.

* * *

 

“You okay?”

Graham gave a small grunt as he shifted, not certain of the answer. Not certain of anything, really, except the pain in his back was making it hard to think.

Speaking of thinking, he’d been doing a lot of that too, while tucked against the pillar supporting this stable. Part of him was convinced this wasn’t a dream—in which case, he’d be better off drinking a damn elfroot potion, or getting someone to stitch up his wound even if it wasn’t with a sterilized thread nor a sterilized environment. He should start looking for food, if the rumbling in his stomach was indicative of anything.

Some part of him was convinced that if he just lied down and slept, he’d wake up okay. But another part of him—the part of him with panic disorder, that screamed if he did even one thing wrong—that part kept him wide awake, even as he was lying on his stomach with his eyes closed, trying to get some fucking sleep.

He heard a huff of laughter, and then someone grabbed him by his collar, pulling him up—and then a bottle was pressed to his lips. His eyes flashed open and he found himself eye-to-eye with a young, _human_ man squatting in front of him, a man with an undercut, wearing a gambeson.

Shit. Not this again.

“Come on,” the man said, his accent clear as day as he pushed the open flask against Graham’s closed lips. English wasn’t his first language, and his next sentences were broken. “Drink. A little. Don’t want to die, right?”

“I—” But the moment Graham tried to speak, Krem thrust the flask up, forcing the potion into his mouth. Graham swallowed sharply, a reflex, and then he coughed, shoving the damn thing away. “Fuck.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Krem said with a sigh, but he didn’t put the potion away or cork the damn thing. It irritated Graham. His words were slow, as if he was consciously conjugating as he was talking. “Look, kid, what is a viddathari in Ferelden for?”

…what? “Viddathari,” Graham repeated with wide eyes, unable to keep a reign on his expression as he pushed himself upright completely. Shit, his back _hurt._ “Why do you think I’m viddathari?”

Graham aw the man’s eyes narrow, brows following suit, as if Graham had said something suspicious. “You speak Qunlat, and no Trade,” Krem said, crossing his arms. “If you aren’t viddathari…?”

It took a full sixty seconds for the words to sink in. Qunlat. Not Trade. Qunlat. Graham had been speaking _Qunlat_?

Krem muttered something else that was definitely not English, or—or _Qunlat_ , if that was really what Graham had been speaking—and Graham caught the words “Bull” and “dios mío,” but that was it. A beat later, he’s switched back to Qunlat. “Follow,” he said, his voice gruff, and Krem got back to his feet. He extended a hand to Graham, and for a moment Graham wondered what’s going to happen.

Why was Krem helping him? There was no reason to, not that Graham can think of. He only just met Bull—and Graham had bounced as soon as he could. Right now, Graham can’t help but think that okay, if this isn’t a dream, then… Krem and the Iron Bull’s Chargers were the best chance he had of living through this.

“Fine,” he gave a small grunt, and accepted the hand in front of him, allowing Krem to pull him to his feet. In an odd way, it felt good to be choose to trust someone, since everything he’d done since waking up in this world was refuse to give anyone the time of day.

He hoped something good would come out of this.

* * *

 

Krem brought him back to the tavern, this time swinging through the small crowds of people with ease. Krem dragged him past the bar, though Graham felt the bartender’s eyes on him anyway, and up the stairs to the rooms. The further they walked, the more anxiety started to knot in Graham’s stomach.

This is just a dream, he reminded himself with every step he took, but the closer they were to their destination, the less convincing the words were. What if this _wasn’t_ a dream. What if Graham spoke to the Iron Bull, and the Bull decided he was suspicious, that he wasn’t trustworthy, that Graham had no part being part of the Chargers? At this point, if that was the outcome, Graham would probably die. Not from his wound—though that still hurt, it felt like it had stopped bleeding from what elfroot he’d taken by now—but rather, he’d have no friends, no income, no shelter, no food. He’d _die_ by virtue of the way the world worked.

What if he’d only wake up when he died? Fuck, that seemed too much a risk to take. Graham almost shuddered, not wanting to find out the hard way.

Krem knocked on a door before shoving in to a room with two beds, far less luxurious than any hotel Graham had ever stayed in—but then, these were analogous to the Middle Ages… “Chief,” Krem said, and Graham recognized that word, but none of the rest. He kept his gaze focused on the ground, terrified of doing or saying something wrong—

_Really?_ He thought, disgusted with himself. _You’re going to just cower in fear? What about what your Inquisitor does? What about what_ The Iron Bull _would want from you?_

And that thought was enough to make him lift his chin up. He met the Iron Bull’s eye, blinking back the sheen of water that started to cover his own, refusing to cry. He had to stick his nose to the ground and _survive_ before he even thought of trying to go back home. The Bull’s eye was gray, and Graham fought back the uncomfortable urge to look away.

“So, viddathari,” Bull says in seamless English—seamless _Qunlat_ , “what’s your story, huh?” Bull nodded to his lieutenant, and then it was just Bull and Graham in the room.

Graham … fuck, he had no clue where to start. But he also knew that the Bull was almost a Thedosian Sherlock Holmes; he was observant as all get-out, and the fast track to Bull’s bad side was to lie to him. So with that in mind, Graham took a deep breath. “I’m not viddathari,” he said, and saw Bull’s eyebrow raise. “My name is Graham.”

“Graham,” the Bull echoed, but by the shape of his vowels as he said it, the name wasn’t familiar to him. Graham should’ve figured that his name wasn’t that common in Thedas. “Mind explaining to me what a human who can only speak Qunlat is doing in Ferelden, with a fake currency and an open wound?”

Fuck, Graham had no idea where to even _begin_. He shifted his weight, ignoring the twinge of pain in his back. It was getting easier to ignore. “It’s not open anymore,” he muttered, glancing behind him at the way Krem had exited. “Your lieutenant made sure of that.”

Bull’s eye narrowed, and for a moment Graham wondered if he had messed up somewhere. Then the Bull pushed on. “You didn’t answer my question, _Graham_. If you’re not viddathari, then what are you?”

Graham ran a hand through his hair, taking a long, deep breath. He couldn’t tell Bull the truth—that’d be suicide. There was no way anyone in this universe would find truth in what Graham would say. But at the same time, flat-out lying would most likely mean certain death. If not by Bull’s hand, then certainly by others’. “I’m not from around here,” he said carefully, hoping he wasn’t revealing too little. “Where I come from, Qunlat is the common language. Though there are some who speak Trade, I never learned it.”

And he was really regretting that fucking decision.

“Par Vollen?” Bull asked. “Or Seheron?” Graham shrugged.

How odd – that Graham felt like he didn’t know enough of this world in order to come up with a back-story convincing enough. He just needed to feel like he was real enough for the Bull, right? Is that what this test was?

Bull rubbed his chin as he sized Graham up. Another wave of self-consciousness took him, but he tried not to back down. He was trying to end up with a _favorable_ opinion in Bull’s mind; the only way to do that would be to not back down, right? Wouldn’t it?

Why didn’t he know this character well enough?? He’d never thought he’d have ended up _interacting_ with the man!

“What brings you to Ferelden?”

Bull kept his voice low, smooth, even. Graham didn’t even have the faculties to keep his _heart_ that way, let alone his _voice_ when it came out of his mouth. “I, um…” Bull’s eye didn’t narrow again, and Graham shifted his weight again, a fidgeting move he thought nothing of. “I’m a bit lost, to be honest. I don’t really know how I got here.” That was the truest thing he’d said yet, fuck. “I don’t have any Ferelden currency. I’m… not quite sure how I’m going to live out here.”

“Got any sort of combat experience?”

…oh. That wasn’t the question Graham had been expecting. He frowned, rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh,” he said, hoping his astonishment wasn’t written too plainly on his face. “I… know a kind of martial arts. And I’ve fenced before.”

Fencing wasn’t real sword-fighting, though, especially if you didn’t do it professionally. And ‘martial arts’ was a few years of judo lessons as a teenager in high school. It had been years since he had done judo, but the fencing was still fresh in his mind, at least. He hoped that counted for something.

Bull gave a small snort, though Graham couldn’t tell if it was disapproval, amusement, or something else. “Uh-huh. Fencing, huh.” He sounded unimpressed. “Let’s see how well you do in combat. If you do well, I’ll consider takin’ you on.”

…what? For a moment, there was nothing in Graham’s head. _Nothing_ , just disbelief and astonishment that was probably written plain as day on his face. Bull looked just as unimpressed with his reaction as he had been with Graham’s ‘fencing.’

“But there’s two conditions.” Bull crossed his arms, and now his eye _did_ narrow at him. “The first being: when we leave of this room, you stop talking. My boys don’t take to Qunlat well, even Krem, and he actually _knows_ some, what he’s picked up on from me. If you stay on here, you either learn Trade, or you shut up. Got it?”

“Why?” the word burst from Graham’s mouth without him meaning to let it out, and—well, if he’d already said it, might as well clarify, right? “Why are you giving me this opportunity? You hardly even know me.”

The question seemed to startle Bull, but judging by the laugh that followed, it… wasn’t a bad thing. “Honestly, kid,” Bull said, his tone a bit softer than before, “I end up taking in all sorts of strays. Krem saw the look on your face when you ran out of here and half-begged me to give you the chance. I think you reminded him of himself.”

What Graham knew about Krem flashed through his mind: Krem, a Tevinter fugitive. On the run, scared of the world and everything in it.

“Second condition,” Bull said, and he reached to the end table placed next to one of the beds. On it was a vial of that elfroot potion, and Graham’s nose wrinkled considerably. “You’ve got to drink a whole dose of elfroot potion. I don’t know who let you get away with hating the taste of this shit for so long, but listen, that wound of yours ain’t going to disappear on its own. Not with the exercise routine that you’ve kept up.”

It might, Graham wanted to argue. But… well, he had a feeling that Bull knew how to win that argument, so he just sighed. “Well, fine. Let’s cut my tongue out and burn my throat. Are those the only conditions that you have for me?”

“Damn, you’re grim, aren’t you?” Bull said with another laugh, this one hearty. It served to get on Graham’s nerves a little, but it served just as well. “Ah, that’s right. If you do end up a Charger, you’re gonna need a nickname. Grim will work well for you for now.”

Grim. His mouth formed the shape of the name, tasting it in his mouth without putting it into sound. Grim.

He … that sounded familiar. But it… it was a good kind of familiar. The kind that warmed him rather than made him feel like he was going fucking crazy.

“Is it a condition?” Graham asked, and immediately the Bull shook his head, a smirk on the man’s face.

“Nah, not a condition,” Bull replied with a hand on his hip. “But it comes with the territory, so it’s getting stuck to you, like it or not.”

And Graham couldn’t help but feel, as Bull shoved past him and handed him a potion and a blunt practice sword, that maybe this dream wasn’t so bad after all.

* * *

 

Grim sits at the Herald’s Rest, enjoying the piss-poor ale while the rest of the company bursts into a rousing rendition of the Chargers’ Anthem. He’s learned Trade well enough by now and he knows every word of it by heart, although he never joins in. The silence that Bull had, at first, demanded of him when he knew only Qunlat, has become rather satisfying, in an odd way. He’s never expected to speak, he never has the chance to stumble over his own tongue, and he likes it that way. It’s a soothing balm on something that used to cause him extreme panic, and he never would have been able to get away with that kind of solution back… before.

Before is such a bizarre concept now. He feels at home in the company of the Chargers, far more so than he ever had “before.” They all _get_ him, in a weird way. For example:

Krem asked him, once, why Grim stopped speaking. And Grim didn’t know any sign language, but he’d put a pen to his thoughts—and it was a bit more nerve-wracking than staying completely silent, but it wasn’t anywhere near the panic that would’ve come if he’d spoken aloud. And Krem took the paper, looked it over, and then he’d _laughed_. “I don’t blame you,” he said, and Grim had known Krem was laughing at himself rather than at Grim.

Skinner had taken him under her wing, in an odd way. After the first few weeks, she’d approached him with her knives and engaged him in sparring without ever saying a word. The fight had lasted a while, too—at least an hour, and that had been pushing his limits back then—but at the end of it, when he landed on his ass and she had a knife to his throat, she’d laughed. “Not bad for a fresh shem,” she said in Trade. “Again.”

His first bonding moment with Stitches had been when he’d gotten injured on his first mission. He’d made a rookie mistake, one he wouldn’t make again, and gotten a cut to the shoulder of his sword arm. In the middle of the fight, Stitches had dragged him to the side and slapped a poultice on it. “Won’t scar as bad as your back had,” Stitches said, because of course Stitches knew that wound he’d gotten when he first showed up here had scarred, “so if you were aiming for a badass scar, you were way off. Now get back out there.”

Dalish, on the other hand, had approached him right out of the gate. “I need your help,” she said with a bright and dazzling smile. “Help me prank the Chief, won’t you? He could use a good laugh.” And he hadn’t wanted to say no; it seemed like a bad idea, but then, she had almost enchanted him with that low voice, that smile that reached her eyes. The prank had gone well enough—the Bull awoke the next morning with feathers stuck to his horns, and he’d made enough of a fool out of himself to make almost everyone in their company laugh, including himself.

Grim was the one who approached Rocky; while the man was working, Grim had walked over and sat down next to him, watched his fingers perform dwarven magic.  Rocky was surprised—but a few minutes later, he was narrating his processes to Grim, talking about different types of explosives and how to use them. Grim found he had a bit of a knack for it, with guidance. He liked sword-fighting better, though.

Bull meets Grim’s eyes, sucking him out from his reminiscing, and smirks, as if he knows exactly what Grim’s been thinking about the whole time. Grim can’t help but offer a half-smile back, downing the last of his ale.

He’d never have thought it, but living on the road, living without indoor plumbing or electricity, he—likes this life a lot better than the life he’d had before.

 He still has no idea how exactly he got here, but he’s made peace with it. It’s not important. What is important is that he’s happy.


End file.
